The purpose of the present study is to design a current control system which is robust to the system dynamics uncertainty and the disturbance of ambient temperature to assure a stable optical output property of LED. The system dynamics model of the LED lighting system was first derived. A 96 W high-power LED luminaire was designed and built in the present study. The linearly perturbed system dynamics model for the LED luminaire is derived experimentally. The dynamics model of LED lighting system is of a multipleinput-multiple-output (MIMO) system with two inputs (applied voltage and ambient temperature) and two outputs (forward current and heat conducting body temperature). A step response test method was employed to the 96 W LED luminaire to identify the system dynamics model. It is found that the current model is just a constant gain (resistance) and the disturbance model is of first order, both changing with operating conditions (voltage and ambient temperature). A feedback control system using PI algorithm was designed using the results of the system dynamics model. The control system was implemented on a PIC microprocessor. Experimental results show that the control system can stably and accurately control the LED current to a constant value at the variation of ambient temperature up to 40 degrees C. The control system is shown to have a robust property with respect to the plant uncertainty and the ambient temperature disturbance. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.